‘Morning Joe’ Tackles Obama’s Hypocrisy

A while back I wrote a controversial column titled, “Why Joe Scarborough Matters”. My premise was that Scarborough — from his perch at MSNBC — “arguably does more to advance conservative ideas than many of the more-celebrated conservative voices in America today.”

Tuesday morning, Scarborough once again took on the thankless job of making the conservative case to an audience that might otherwise not give it due consideration. Regarding Obama’s reversals on Bush-era policies (such as GITMO and the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad), Scarborough said:

Maybe [President Obama] should have just disagreed with Dick Cheney and George W. Bush — and not characterized them in a way that assumed the absolute worst — that they somehow did not love the constitution as much as Barack Obama — that they were somehow willing to shred that document and all the rights that we hold so dear … Because if you’re going to make those claims, and then do the same thing that they do, then you need to apologize to the American people.

As is often the case, Scarborough was outnumbered three-to-one. Nevertheless, he correctly made the case that Obama’s campaign rhetoric has not matched his actions in office — a point which should be obvious to anyone with a memory, but which is conveniently forgotten by Obama apologists.

In retrospect, it is painfully obvious that much of the anti-Bush rhetoric that helped propel Obama to the White House in 2008 was unwarranted, irresponsible, and transparently political. (Yes, it’s water under the bridge, but setting the record straight on history is an important task for opinion leaders.)